Lifestyle and luxury drive continued Daniel Island demand

By David Caraviello

Special to The Post and Courier February 17, 2024

It was a place but hardly a destination. When J.J. Rahnamoon was growing up in downtown Charleston, Daniel Island was a raw coastal wilderness used primarily for farming and cattle ranching. The first real estate agents to sell homes on the island tell stories about having to wear thick boots to guard against all the rattlesnakes. It was difficult even to get to until Interstate 526 was extended east over the Cooper River in 1992.

“When I was growing up, It was just a desolate, uncharted Lowcountry island that you saw from a bridge when you were passing by,” recalled Rahnamoon, now a real estate agent with Charleston Empire Properties.

Goodness how things have changed. What was once agricultural land at the southern tip of Berkeley County has evolved into a bustling enclave of the city of Charleston, one full if enviable recreational amenities, shops and restaurants, and waterfront vistas replete with oak trees, pampas grass and Spanish moss. Over three decades, Daniel Island has become a representation of what so many see as ideal Lowcountry living, all of it packed into 4,000 master planned acres at the confluence of the Wando and Cooper rivers.

“Visually, Daniel Island is breathtaking. The green space is gorgeous. I often walk on Saturday mornings, and you can go our over by the water and walk for miles if you choose to. It’s literally out of a magazine cover, with the moss hanging from the trees,” said Melody Novak, an agent with Daniel Ravenel Sotheby’s International Realty.

“It’s beautiful, and you combine that with having everything at your fingertips. You can live, work, play and send your kids to school in the same place.”

It’s been a startling change, and testament to meticulous planning. Even in 2001, when current Daniel Island Real Estate president and broker-in-charge Jeff Leonard first visited the island, many of the roads were still dirt. In the early 2000s, the island’s commercial centerpiece was Tecklenburg’s Market, a gas station and convenience store. The tennis stadium, the concerts, the country club golfs courses designed by Tom Fazio and Rees Jones, the picture-perfect waterfront parks, the residential housing units of all shapes, types and price points - they were still yet to come.

Bishop England High School relocated from the Charleston peninsula to Daniel Island in 1997, the software company Blackbaud set up its headquarters there in 2000, and what is now the Credit One Charleston Open women’s tennis tournament moved from Hilton Head to a new facility on Daniel Island in 2001. Along with those commercial landmarks came more and more residents, intrigued by the idea of living in a place where almost anything could be accessed by golf a cart.

“The allure of Daniel Island is the vibrant community that encourages both and active and social lifestyle with a location convenient to everything,” said Lauren Koziol, an agent with Maison Real Estate. “It is extremely rare to find a nationally ranked 36-hole golf course, multiple resort-style pools and fitness facilities, a myriad of picturesque walking trails, innovative playgrounds, a world-class arena, award winning restaurants, and top-rated schools - all conveniently located within one master-planned community.”

That master-planned community in 2007 received an Urban Land Institute Award for Exellence, which rewards creative land use and planning. One of Daniel Island’s calling cards is it’s wide range of residential real estate options, from condos and townhouses bro multi-million-dollar luxury homes - including one 6,000-square-foot new build in the Daniel Island Park area of the Island listed at $5.475 million.

And that’s just the beginning of what Daniel Island is capable of in 2024. “I expect to see this year some homes that will sell in the $10 million range for their final price,” Leonard said. “I think we’ll break records this year, for sure.”

A ‘rocket ship’ of equity

Locate on the archipelago off the northern edge of Daniel Island, The Retreat offers a glimpse of the island’s residential real estate market at large. Scarcity has become a way of life on an island that’s nearly built out and has meager available inventory - just 29 total active listings as of last week, Leonard said. The Retreat, meanwhile, is the final residential community being constructed on the island, and its first phase of 30 homesites sold out last year.

It’s easy t see the appeal; The Reserve is nestled on a series of islets between Ralston and Lowell creeks, with emerald-green marsh grass as far as the eye can see. Leonard said that homesites in the first phase of The Retreat sold for between $895,000 and $3.6 million. He added that all of the homesites being sold this year in phase two have a view, so he expects average prices to be around $2 million and topping out around $4 million for some lots on the water.

“Demand on those homesites,” Leonard said, “is high.” Which is pretty much the case all across the island. The Waterfront, the townhome complex being built by East-West Partners along the Wando River, recently released the first 11 units in its third phase of development. Some of the original homes on the island’s south side, which date from the early 2000’s, are being bought, gutted and updated, Leonard said. Novak recently welcomed 36 groups over the course of a weekend-long open house.

“Daniel Island is pretty much a rocket ship of equity for existing owners. And that rocket ship is just getting fueled by continuous demand,” Naval said. “I am getting a house ready to go on the market on Daniel Island, and even your ‘make ready’ is different because you know the demand is going to be massive instantly. So, you really have to prepare for the fact that you’re going to have multiple offers.”

The insatiable demand, when combined with such low available inventory, undoubtedly creates price escalation. Novak crunched the numbers: in 2019, she said, 346 housing units were sold on Daniel Island at an average cost per square foot of $265.96 and an average sales price of $787,181. In 2023, by contrast, the number of housing units sold on Daniel Island was 278, at an average price per square foot of $504.95 and an average sales price of $1.588 million.

“If you’re going to buy a single-family home, for anything decent, you have to have budget of at least $1.2 million,” Rahanamoon said. “I do feel like having Bishop England there is a large draw, but you also have everything, and you’re so close to the beach. When stuff gets listed there, if you’re lucky, if it lasts three days - if it even ,yes it to the market.”

Koziol, who is preparing to list a home in the Daniel Island Park section of the island, said current inventory is down sharply from the 120 active listings that were available in January 2019. And yet, despite that, “buyer demand is still very high,” she added. “But buyers want turnkey properties and are willing to wait for the right home to come on the market.”

The low inventory occasionally leads some prospective Daniel Island buyers to consider other communities nearby. Leonard said that some buyers who perhaps can’t find the right fit on Daniel Island turn to Point Hope, a community on the Cainhoy Peninsula being developed by the same company that crafted Daniel Island. Novak said she’d witnessed that domino effect on Beresford Creek Landing, a neighborhood off Clements Ferry Road that sits across Nowell Creek from Daniel Island.

“Daniel Island is so busy right now; it’s having a powerful effect on the market turbocharging adjacent areas around Daniel Island as well, like Beresford Creek Landing,” Novak added. “Those areas are also being impacted by Daniel Island. I just listed a house in Beresford Creek Landing, and when I put the pricing strategy together with my clients, I said, ‘Our buyer is someone who wants Daniel Island but is finding it impossible to compete in that market.’ The house went under contract (last) Saturday evening with multiple offers. So that shows the thrust of how busy that Daniel Island market is.”

The Daniel Island difference

For residents and visitors alike, the south side of Daniel Island is a lowcountry playground of recreational opportunities - walking trails and boat launches, green spaces and clay tennis courts, playgrounds and waterfront vistas, raucous live music performances and windswept patios perfect for enjoying a glass of wine. Whether it’s attending a concert at Credit One Stadium, dropping off kids at Bishop England to walking the trails at Smythe Park, that’s the Daniel Island most people see.

But venture up to the island’s northern end, and the environment changes - to one of luxury homes, many of them immense and on sizable lots. There are dozens of homes on water, even more running along the holes of Daniel Island Country Club golf courses. Together, they represent one of the more unique luxury offerings East of the Cooper - relatively recent construction that can go for $4 million and above, with space and easy access to central Mount Pleasant and downtown Charleston.

“The Daniel Island lifestyle is synonymous with unparalleled offerings, setting is apart from any other community in the lowcountry,” Koziol said. “From its inception until now, only the most elite custom home builders have been granted the privilege to craft residences, resulting in a neighborhood where each home boasts individual beauty and aesthetic appeal and a community that takes pride in where they live.”

Although breezy coastal architecture dominates the landscape, the intention Daniel Island Park is for no two homes to look the same. A few sport exteriors that are almost European in style, and it can be downright beguiling to drive down a thoroughfare like Ralston Creek Street or King George Street. “I don’t think anybody in their wildest imagination thought it would ever become what it’s become,” Leonard said.

“I give the credit to the builders and give it to the architects again to the visionaries of the folks that have been standing behind it and continue to bring beautiful luxury products to the market,” he added. “Every time I go into that area and there’s another home going up, I think, ‘Look at the magnitudes of it, the scale of it, the features of it.’ So, it is a very unique place. You drive people through that area, and their jaws drop.”

To find comparable listings, prospective buyers would have to look at homes on the Wando River up Highway 17 in northern Mount Pleasant or in the Old Village. The Daniel Island difference is often in the age of the homes; the $5.574 million listing at 465 Lesene St., for instance, is currently under contraction, and a $4.495 Million listing four doors down at 485 Lesene St was built in 2022. There’s also a $3.55 million listing at 260 Island Park Drive that was completed earlier this year.

“Those properties on the north end of Daniel Island that maybe have about dock are are the water are few and far between,” Rahnamoon said. “The only other option that you really have on that side is the Old Village of Mount Pleasant on the water, and then you’re talking at least $7 million, and you probably need to do some updating. Whereas on Daniel Island, in the $4 to $7 million range, you can get something that’s turn key, and you wouldn’t have update.”

For Daniel Island in its entirety, the question becomes what’s next. Wheels are turning on the island’s final residential developments, and individual home lots are growing increasingly scarce. “If buyers only want new construction or the ability to custom build their home, it is definitely going to become tougher,” Koziol said. “However, because the quality of construction on the island is so high, if buyers are willing to buy a preowned property, they can make their own; they will certainly have some luck with a little patience.”

And all those rockets ships of equity, in Novak’s words, are bound to begin lifting off at some point. The folks who bought on Daniel Island early - maybe not back in the days of dirt roads and rattlesnakes, but when it was still a curiosity glimpsed from I-526 - are sitting on incredibly lucrative nest eggs. It’s just a matter of time before that generation of buyers starts cashing in to make room for the next one, putting more valuable Daniel Island inventory on the market.

“Daniel Island is giving people who invested early a lot of options,” Novak said. “I think ther’re a lot of people out there who don’t realize how high the demand is right now and how much people want it. And you will see a lot more listings coming ups as people realize, ‘Wow, Joe’s house across the street just sold for $2.1 million.’ There are a lot of houses in that market, and those people are going to be cashing in. So, I think you are going to see a very healthy market continue there.”